Is your JUDGING IMPARTIAL?

[meganium45]

I was head judge at a Gym Challenge once, my kid in the finals match, and there was a question on the match.

They gave it to me in the player A / Player B format, and I ruled it correctly, given the cards involved, I knew it was against my son, and ultimately cost him his trip to Worlds.

The best judges make the best calls.

It is tough when you are the "go to" judge in the room, but like has been said, I am never the judge in my kids age divsion, and never judge their matches. I have a good judge staff who handles this.

Yes, my response was swift, and strong, in that I wish we would have higher standards for judges, but judges are hard enough to find as it is. I mark myself lucky in my city.

Talk to you soon.

Vince

And note, even though I felt the need to come back hard, people who know me around here know that none of this is taken personally.

See you all in Memphis (you all ARE coming to Memphis this weekend, right?)

 

[NoPoke]

Here is an incomplete list of aspects that WILL get you into the difficult area where you may be accused of bias.

• sportsmanship
• gamesmanship
• stalling
• trash talk/intimidation.
• collusion
• post game accusations of deck stacking.

None of which have nice neat clean answers.

And here's the rub: If a player decides that you are biased it is at that point that they seek out corroborating evidence like family, private board membership, friendships etc. But you wont be told about their feelings because they view you as biased. Instead the story is spread and the mud sticks unless you are fortunate enough to have a big presence.

 

[meganium45]

Hey, was that a Fat Joke?

LOL

M45

 

[pokeguru]

I try my best to be impartial when judging, but like NoPoke said, it is REALLY difficult to be completely fair and impartial. The difficulty I have here in Falkirk is that a LOT of the people at league who attend our tournaments have grown on me, particularly friends I had in Edinburgh before I started at league, and who now attend on a near regular basis.

If I was judging a match with one of my friends playing against another person, it really is a lose-lose situation for me, if the other player KNOWS that I'm the other person's friend. If I call against the other player, I'm accused of bias. If I call against my friend, they can accuse me of making a wrong ruling just to stop myself looking bias.

This is why I like the sound of this Player A/B system. For smaller tournaments though, with fewer judging staff (i.e. 1 TO/HJ, which we in Falkirk had for a while, and still have every so often), this may be a logistical difficulty, but worth it if we can pull it off.

 

[homeofmew]

Ah now here I have to disagree, Tina. All players, no matter who they are, are entitled to call the Head Judge. Players have to take it on trust that the Head Judge is not biased. Good Head Judges will do their utmost to ensure that there is no bias and as far as practical no apperance of bias. However I would rather appear biased than shirk my responsibility as Head Judge just because it was my son who was one of the party's in a difficult rulling. I can take steps to fix the appearance of bias but there is no way I can fix ducking a responsibility.

I doubt that you are alone in your view that even the HJ should avoid ruling when they might be involved. I can even hear the siren cry myself, since it isn't uncommon that I'm a judge at tournaments where the majority of the players don't know me or much about me other than the fact that my son is playing.

True the head judge always does have the last word.
although it does contridict with can not be judged by a family member.
that is if the head judge has a family member involved.

I find this part confuzing. The Head Judge in this case IMO call all the judges together and vote on a final ruling if it that hard =/ in most cases i find the rulings are written on paper and have been done before.

 

[Rocketman]

This is the same story that happens at our events when my fellow Prof. Donphan has to judge his daughter or his wife.

As Dave said, try not to judge those matches. Usually you have more judges than we have, so it will be more simple.

There always will be those complainings about being unbalanced with judging. I'm lucky I don't have kids, nor I'm part of a secret team or any similar entity (if Italy had a secret team, maybe we would have been higher in ranks at Worlds ), so I'm out of any of those issues, but I'm a friend of a person who is ALWAYS in the eye of the storm for that. And he is always equal and fair.

If you're the TO and you know there will be such a problem, just have this judge make rulings and judging for everyone else.

And, sorry if I throw this thing here, but meg45: yes, I think US judges were a little bit unfair with the other players. Don't want to go through this issue though, just I hope next year players (and translators) will be treated better by a portion of the US judging staff.

Now I see it different..........I would like the translators to show the judging staff the respect they deserve. I could go on, but I'll wait to see the response to this. As far as Vince goes, I may not agree with him on everything, but I would take him as a judge on my staff ANY day of the week. Period. I was there when he made his toughest call, one of the toughest anyone would have to make.
Rocketman

 

[ukpokemonpro]

Now guys and gals please keep this civil and although we can probably all think of examples of what we may think are poor decisions as with all retrospective judging posts it's almost impossible to know all the facts.

I do not want to see this descend into a he said she said thread if you have issues with the judging at Worlds or the Translations take it up at the time, PM each other or make contact with POP but keep it off this post please.

If however you want to make some general points about how Affiliations and Alliances may affect players, judges and translators then go ahead. I think we all gain by washing what so far looks like our clean smalls in public..

Certainly I am impressed with the responses and have picked up some pointers for future use. The Player A and Player B tip is one I will instigate as a way of not only being impartial but of being seen to be impartial.

As to how anyone behaved at Worlds well I couldn't comment and I do think the time for navel gazing on that is gone - lets move on and address current and future judging.

 

[NoPoke]

..............although it does contridict with can not be judged by a family member. that is if the head judge has a family member involved.

Tina, where is this written down?

 

[DukeFireBird]

well, this has happened to me (judging with team members)

NVSC 05 - I was a floor Judge for the 15+ where the NPA was dominate with the visiting Californian team(s)

I was toyed/played with by the Californains saying I better judge fairly. We are all good friends and there was no problems. In the 2nd game of the semi-finals with 1 of my team members, there was a ruling needed cause of the following sit. - mass destruction for the final prize, but no bench. game conditions tied 1-1 - Now me and the head judge were flipping through the compendium for the correct ruling, seeing none, i went to the basic rulebook and rules a sudden death game. That was the correct ruling of course. But during the game, i was sitting between 2 matches to watch them and after the 1 was finished, i was looking intently at my team members hand, but was completely silent, and when i knew what he was planning, i started to find the above ruling.

IMHO if you are the LL/LO/TO/PTO/etc... of the area, the players at the event would know that you have a team, and there shouldnt be any probl;ems.

just my 3 cents

 

[Marcello-Milord]

Now I see it different..........I would like the translators to show the judging staff the respect they deserve. I could go on, but I'll wait to see the response to this. As far as Vince goes, I may not agree with him on everything, but I would take him as a judge on my staff ANY day of the week. Period. I was there when he made his toughest call, one of the toughest anyone would have to make.
Rocketman

The translators always respected judges and all of their decisions, though some of those decisions were totally wrong and unbalanced for foreign players (and Jarrod Nack said also that we could complain if some decisions were wrong for us, if we were Professors).
Judges often didn't respected fellow professors and their work, asking to SHUT UP and repeating over and over not to give hints, even when we were merely translating something.
It's just like someone wasn't trusting in our fairness. Most of us were Professors, we know what we can do and what we can't.
And for this "I don't trust you" thing, translators were not judges.
The only exception was Eskil, who demonstrated that one can be both judge and translator without giving advantage to anyone.

That thing isn't totally OT, you know

 

[PokePop]

One thing the translators needed to do better was to communicate more with the other player.
If they're holding an extended conversation with their player, the other player naturally gets suspicious about what's being discussed. After all, no one is having long conversations with him during a game. So, if a conversation is being held, make sure to pause every now and then to update the other player what is being discussed with the first player.
And if it's something that can't be discussed with that other player (translations of a card in play and how it interacts with a card they're thinking of playing, but haven't played yet), it's probably best to get a judge over at that point. There shouldn't be closed conversations between a player and a translator.

 

[Rocketman]

Sorry guys, it has nothing to do with trust.......look at it this way. If you are translating for a player and a ruling is made and you thing it should have been different, well as a TRANSLATOR you bring this up to the judge. So then why shouldn't the other player have a parent of friend to sit by them and also help them decide which rulings to challenge? Kinda like a coach!
I know that this is diffcult to do, but when a " Fellow Professor" becomes a translator, he or she now has a job to do, and even if you know the ruling is wrong, by bringing it up during the game, you are now acting as more than a translator. Everyone makes mistakes, but when you try to coorect one mistake by stepping out the your job bundries, you compound it my making another mistake and comprimising the integrity of the game by acting as "coach" If you don't feel it is coaching, then you won't mind the other player having someone stand by to make sure the rulings go ok as well!
The judges judge and the translators translate. period. It has nothing to do with respect for the translators, they may well be very good professors and know the rules very well. But if you are a translator, then you cannot get involved with rulings.
Bear in mind this post was not meant to offend anyone, but this was brought up by another. I just thought I could make my point about it. I was not trying to be " uncivil".
Rick

 

[Marcello-Milord]

But you're absolutely right about that.
Everyone has to do only the job they are supposed to.
My complaint was on a behavior of a big portion of the US judges, who were treating translators as "sure-coaching" people.
Being a translator is a difficult thing. When a judge explains a rule, a translator needs a break after each sentence in order to get translated the sentence to the kid.
If the judge starts complaining after EACH sentence "You have only to translate", just underlining that they MAY think the translator may add something to the translation (coaching?).
A person gets mad after 2 days of that.
If translators MUST respect the work of the judges, in the same way judges MUST respect the DIFFICULT work of translators. And being BOTH Professors AND translators is more difficult, as the majority of the translators were very respctable TOs and judges in their countries, so they're used to judge, and being unable to give their rulings is difficult, and someone wasn't able to understand that, and giving the "rule" that "I'm the judge and I'm the best, you are ONLY a translator, so shut up".
Don't want to be disruptive, trust me, it's just going against a behavior that should be erased.

 

[GymLeaderPhil]

My complaint was on a behavior of a big portion of the US judges, who were treating translators as "sure-coaching" people.

That sure wasn't the impression I had. The only problems I had was with those who wanted to make rulings.

If translators MUST respect the work of the judges, in the same way judges MUST respect the DIFFICULT work of translators.

To be very blunt there were good translators and there were bad translators. There were some bad translators who ended up making it back for a second year most likely because their distributor requests it. For some English was difficult to understand or use with such technical terminology within games. Some did not translate back to English what a foreign language player was saying to the English speaking player. There were flaws, but that's to be expected.

However there were good translators and I respect them for the work. You have to earn that respect though.

And being BOTH Professors AND translators is more difficult, as the majority of the translators were very respctable TOs and judges in their countries, so they're used to judge, and being unable to give their rulings is difficult, and someone wasn't able to understand that, and giving the "rule" that "I'm the judge and I'm the best, you are ONLY a translator, so shut up".

The translators are there to do their job. If you have experience with the game then that's great, but you're not there to judge. The judges are the ones who make the game decisions. They are the only ones accountable and responsible for all aspects of the matches.

Should a translator, a match slip runner, or a registration staffer go into a match and make an incorrect decision it falls on the judge's shoulders. It should be even more apparent to Professors and Organizers who are not judges that they should call a judge over when a ruling is needed instead of stepping in themselves. Consistency is key and can easily be broken as soon as someone "steps in".

When I play in a local tournament I get asked many times for rulings, I send them to the judge. If I see a problem occuring, I alert the judge. It's not really that hard. I'm not accountable and I don't want to be accountable when I'm playing in a tournament.

 

[Rocketman]

That's exactly right, Phil. No matter what you're doing, the judge and ONLY the judge should be doing the judging. It doesn't matter how qualified you are or think you are, NEVER get involved in rulings questions unless you are a judge. Great point! And Phil is a great judge, but has the respect to not interfere in another judges event.
Also, there were good and bad translators, and in their defense, I don't think none of these professors were professional translators, and they were trying to do the best they could. But if the judge tells you to that this is the way it is, then that is the way it is. If you have a problem and feel a judge was being disrespectful to you, then after the match, take it to the head judge or PUI staff. This is the proper way to handle this. That being said, since I know all of the judges on staff at worlds. You would be hard pressed to find a finer group to staff the event.
Marcello, again, this is NOT a matter of respect, it is a matter of following the correct procedure! Translators translate and judges judge! Period! It has nothing to do with respect. If a translator is told to sit in a certain place until they are needed and they fail to follow the judges instructions for this, then they will be told to go sit down, and follow the instructions of the judge.

 

[NoPoke]

1) Dont wait till after the match.

If you have a problem with a judge or a rulling call the Head judge.



2) Spectators CAN talk to Judges.

If you are a spectator and you see something wrong then talk to a judge.


3) Spectators should not interfere.

So you see something wrong. Can you get the judges attention or is it best to get another judge to intervene. Make sure that if the players can hear you that nothing you say can be construed as coaching.


4) Translators are more than Spectators.

Think about it they can talk directly to players. That is something that is usually reserved for the judges only. Being a translator is not an easy task. Judges can help translators by reminding them that they should not be conversing with the players. Easier said than done for all parties involved.


5) A judge should make good use of the resources avilable to ensure correct operation of the tournament.

Somtimes this means asking a spectator for information or even guidance!


6) Judges learn on the job too.

So you have lots of experience but you are currently a player or spectator. If you can help the judges learn then you should. Of course since you are very experienced you will take great care to avoid causing a disturbance. Sometimes this will mean keeping quiet even when an 'obvious' judging error is being made. Which brings me too:


7) Judges can and will make mistakes.

They are human and will err, just like the players and the spectators and the translators. So whtever happens remember the Spirit of The Game.

 

[Marcello-Milord]

That's exactly right, Phil. No matter what you're doing, the judge and ONLY the judge should be doing the judging. It doesn't matter how qualified you are or think you are, NEVER get involved in rulings questions unless you are a judge. Great point! And Phil is a great judge, but has the respect to not interfere in another judges event.
Also, there were good and bad translators, and in their defense, I don't think none of these professors were professional translators, and they were trying to do the best they could. But if the judge tells you to that this is the way it is, then that is the way it is. If you have a problem and feel a judge was being disrespectful to you, then after the match, take it to the head judge or PUI staff. This is the proper way to handle this. That being said, since I know all of the judges on staff at worlds. You would be hard pressed to find a finer group to staff the event.
Marcello, again, this is NOT a matter of respect, it is a matter of following the correct procedure! Translators translate and judges judge! Period! It has nothing to do with respect. If a translator is told to sit in a certain place until they are needed and they fail to follow the judges instructions for this, then they will be told to go sit down, and follow the instructions of the judge.

That's exactly what I said.
The difference in what you and Phil says, it's that, and I want to underline again this, some judges had a bad behavior towards translators. They acted as they were the only ones that did know the rules.

And, sorry but when talking with Jarrod Nack, PUI INTL OP Manager, I asked if it was possible to complain, as professors, about a ruling we considered wrong, and he answered YES.
I never saw people complaining.
But that's not the matter - the matter is that people were tranlsating ONLY what judges said, and judges still complaining because they were THINKING that translators were adding coaching to the speech.
And - as long as every judge knew every single language of INTL players at Worlds - there's no way they knew that translators were coaching.
And if those judges knew those languages - why have translators?

 

[PokePop]

Sorry guys, it has nothing to do with trust.......look at it this way. If you are translating for a player and a ruling is made and you thing it should have been different, well as a TRANSLATOR you bring this up to the judge. So then why shouldn't the other player have a parent of friend to sit by them and also help them decide which rulings to challenge? Kinda like a coach!
I know that this is diffcult to do, but when a " Fellow Professor" becomes a translator, he or she now has a job to do, and even if you know the ruling is wrong, by bringing it up during the game, you are now acting as more than a translator. Everyone makes mistakes, but when you try to coorect one mistake by stepping out the your job bundries, you compound it my making another mistake and comprimising the integrity of the game by acting as "coach" If you don't feel it is coaching, then you won't mind the other player having someone stand by to make sure the rulings go ok as well!
The judges judge and the translators translate. period. It has nothing to do with respect for the translators, they may well be very good professors and know the rules very well. But if you are a translator, then you cannot get involved with rulings.
Bear in mind this post was not meant to offend anyone, but this was brought up by another. I just thought I could make my point about it. I was not trying to be " uncivil".
Rick

I actually would have to disagree with this point.
If someone sees something that they think is wrong, and they are part of the process of implementing what they think is wrong, they can and should bring it up, but they must do so only within the chain of command.
It must be a private conversation without involving either player and, if after raising their issue, the judge maintains that the way it was decided is correct, they must then move forward as the judge corrects.
The judge is in charge and does make the final decision, but no one is above making mistakes or even so much as being giving input.
If I were making a mistake, I'd rather have someone tell me about it before it's done than keep their mouth shut. Conversely, if someone thinks I'm wrong and I'm not, I'm very open to explaining why it's correct.

 

[Rocketman]

You guys both read my post wrong. Of course if something is wrong, the point should be made, and as you said Pop, by going through the correct channels! Example and this DID NOT happen at worlds, but similar cases did)...I am a judge and make a ruling against a , lets say French player ( again, ONLY AN EXAMPLE). I tell the translator, and before the translator turns to the player, they say " no, that's not right. I'm a professor, and I know better than that" ( example is now over). That's coaching. If that translator had first translated to the player, then asked the judge to clarify himself, still not satisfied should call for the head judge. In other words, as I said in my previous post, follow the correct procedure. Some translators clearly did not, but again, as I also said in my previous post, I know they are not professional translators and most are related to or friends of the player they translating for ( not in all cases). I understand this. I agree with you 100 % Pop.
Marcello did not feel as if the judges were respecting the judges for their knowledge and professor status. That the translators were spoken to disrespectfully. My point is that translators were not chosen for their knowledge of the game, they were chosen for their command of languages. To act as a judge in that capacity is stepping out of bounds. If a translator did this or would not sit in their area until called for, they were most likely told sit in the place they were supposed to or follow the correct procedure. This is not a lack of respect, this is following the rules!
Again, please don't think I feel that a wrong ruling should be left unchecked. There is a right way and a wrong way to address this. This is my point, Pop.
Marcello, what do you mean by every judge knowing every language at worlds? This is impossible. I don't think any judges were thinking that the translators were adding coaching, and I feel that that charge is showing a little disrespect to every judge the worked worlds last year. Can you prove this? Did this personally happen to you? If so, did you not use the proper channels to rectify this? If this happened and you can prove it, I advise you to contact PUI with this. If you are blowing a little steam, be a little nicer about it, the judges are human too! :clap:
Judging staff and translators are going to have to learn to work together. Can't we just all get along? :thumb:

Rick

 

[meganium45]

I like NoPoke's Post.

Spectators should talk to the judges. I wish all spectators would just do this.

When the spectators try to talk to the players, that is when problems erupt.

Now, there are times when I do not want any spectators anymore - we call it elimination rounds for 11-14 and 10-....anyone wonder why? Ask me about Missouri States sometimes!

Worst part is, some problems not stop....

M45